


Hands

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi | Fire Emblem: Binding Blade
Genre: F/F, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8928859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Miledy finds some aspects of a three-way relationship easier than others.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "jealous" as well as a catch-all amnesty prompt at the community femslashficlets at Dreamwidth. It's good to be getting started there again!

It is not something that Miledy likes to admit to herself, or relishes dwelling on. Or thinking about it at all, frankly. But it is there, and to ignore this would be akin to simply waiting for a poisoned arrowhead’s toxic message to make its rounds through her veins because visiting a cleric would be too much hassle.

Speaking of clerics.

She did not think of it during what Miledy has begun to think of as The Separation. She had always assumed, before the start of the war and her parting from Guinevere, that the princess and Ellen were bed-mates, if not lovers outright. It had not bothered her. She had known from the beginning that such was not her role to play, and did not begrudge Ellen stepping into it. If anything, Miledy felt grateful at the time, as knowing that Guinevere’s heart was in another’s hands removed any temptation Miledy might have felt to give any hint of her own feelings.

She looks back on it now, amused at the notion that her feelings had been anything but glaringly obvious. But anyway.

When the princess and her cleric absconded with the Emblem, turning the empire and Miledy’s life on their respective ears, she had been too busy being frightened half out of her mind for the pair of them, and furious with them both to boot, to think at all about any other ramifications of Guinevere and Ellen being alone on the road for weeks that turned to months. And at the time, even if it had, it would not have bothered her.

But now, oh, she thinks of it.

Seated on her stool at her folding desk — once custom-made by a well-compensated craftswoman for the princess’s thirteenth birthday, now rendered ramshackle by the passage of years and miles — Guinevere drafts a letter to the Pheraen boy-general’s father, no doubt laying the groundwork for a more cordial relationship between their nations after the war is done. Even in her bitter distress, Miledy feels buoyed by the trust the princess has shown in telling her of the letter’s contents at all. And it is exactly like Guinevere, to look ahead to the war’s conclusion even in the midst of it.

Sitting cross-legged with her back to Guinevere’s stool, though, is Ellen. Half-curtained by the brown hair that seems to have grown unhindered during the war, Ellen’s face is flushed with effort, her chapped lips — Miledy makes a mental note to lend Ellen the balm she herself carries for long flights — pursed in concentration. Her hand — soft and unblemished, as healers’ hands tend to be — is cupped over the sapphire embedded in the steel head of her staff. Wisps of blue light and ember-bright motes of the same hue dance beneath her fingers. Miledy doesn’t have the slightest notion of what she is doing or how healing magic works, but she knows from many nights watching her brethren in one camp or another that it takes supreme will. This, she knows, Ellen has in spades.

Each of the women works with one hand, and their free hands, Miledy sees — looks at — stares at — are clasped lightly together. Guinevere’s free arm hangs at her side, and Ellen holds that hand with the one that isn’t recharging her staff. Occasionally, a thumb will rub against a palm, or their fingers will thread together.

Miledy sits some few feet away, polishing the magic-laced silver head of her lance with a well-oiled cloth, and thinks she probably needs to put out her eyes, immediately. Or just shut them. Or look elsewhere. Or die.

It is absolutely ridiculous. Insane. She can watch the two couple like rabbits, bringing one another to stuttering climax while she kisses one or another’s shoulder, already well-sated by one or both, and feel entirely content in herself, secure in her status in the context of whatever it is they are now. All well and good. But she sees this, this casual intimacy between the pair, and —

The hiss is involuntary, a near-gasp hindered by her gritted teeth. The lance head is well-maintained indeed, to leave such a paper-thin cut across Miledy’s palm when applied with such accidental, infinitesimal pressure. She would take pride in her own diligence if she wasn’t bleeding.

Miledy’s mortification only grows at the sight of Ellen, stave discarded and princess released, all but throwing herself onto her knees in front of her. “It is noth—” is all she can get out, before Ellen’s healing magic begins to do its work and silences her instantly. The not-pain, not-pleasure of self-knitting skin is everything for one long moment. At any other time, the awareness of Guinevere’s eyes on her from where she still sits would drive out all else, but for now, the magic is all.

“You should take a care with your hands,” Ellen says, some seconds after the light has died. Her hands are both clasped around Miledy’s own. This is distracting. Still, she hears the cleric continue, “We trust ourselves all too often to them, love.”

That last is wonderful enough, and horrible for Miledy’s composure, but almost worse is the sincerity that glows off the cleric’s face like magic. Miledy parts her lips to say — something, anything — but then she feels the jaws of the trap snapping shut.

“Indeed,” Guinevere says, that all-too-rare smile that Miledy would kill to protect transforming her features from beautiful to gorgeous. “In the bedroom as well as on the battlefield,” she continues. The smile progresses to a smirk, and Miledy is reminded of the fact that everyone in Bern’s royal line seems to become a monster sooner or later. Perhaps this was inevitable.

Miledy wants to take Trifinne and fly, fly far away to literally anywhere but here, but Ellen is still holding her hand with both of hers, and somehow she can’t bring herself to pull it free.


End file.
